Tranquil Again

Views at Hameau de la Brousse



It feels like the end of summer camp; all the Le Printemps sans Chapiteau actors, technicians, musicians, and organizers packed up with our help, kissed us all on both cheeks, and left yesterday after a very successful, well-attended performance of La Mouette on Friday night. La Mouette means The Seagull, it is one of Chekhov's most famous pieces, I think, full of people who are in love with the wrong person. The show started around 9 pm on Friday night and I helped take tickets. Fortunately it didn't rain, but it did get pretty chilly by the time the show was over around 11 pm. Everyone was wrapped in the blankets that Michel and Helene keep just for this purpose. But nobody minded; the play was riveting, the actors were funny, tragic, and compelling, and the setting was absolutely magical. The director used the entire park surrounding the stage for some of the action and it was very dramatic to have lights out in the trees and on the limestone cliff walls below the hameau where the amphitheatre is set. They had 3 curtain calls to a standing ovation.

Reed stayed up to watch the play too, and although he was cold and thirsty and couldn't understand a word he wouldn't leave or let one of us take him back to the room, because he wanted to see it. After watching the rehearsals on Thursday from his little rock platform on stage right, he was tickled when he recognized bits of the action and he especially wanted to see them use the big spot lights on the metal towers behind the bleacher seating. I think it was pretty magical, too, to see the people we had been eating with all week transformed into their characters. There was also a neat technical feat of making it rain outside the big French door type windows at the back of the stage which Reed was pretty excited about. Afterwards, we all hurried back to the main building where Helene had a huge pot of hot borscht waiting for us, followed by cheesecake, which we were eating at 1 a.m. with everyone, basking in the post-performance glow and the expansive good moods of all the actors. Fortunately Reed was quite happy to climb into bed as soon as the play was over.

We were nearly at the capacity of the kitchen, dining room and the dishes and silverware and so on, feeding this group lunch and dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; the dishwasher was running constantly to keep up and all of us were peeling and chopping veggies for hours before each meal, it seemed. Fortunately Reed discovered on Tuesday that he loves loading and unloading the dishwasher so he was always checking the machine to see if one load was done so he could put all the dishes on the shelves, add the soap, and then push the buttons. Sometimes there is something like this that he'll take to wherever we're WWOOFing which kind of makes up for the extra work he creates at times. He's also been helping Walt with some of the landscaping and gardening which always perks up the exterior of wherever we're WWOOFing. And again, I'm amazed at what he'll eat when I haven't cooked it, there's nothing else, and when he's really hungry from the lack of snacks: Waldorf salad heavy on the celery, lentils, squid in cardamom sauce, anchovy spread, spicy merguez sausage, fig crisp, curry etc. Of course there was lots of stuff he loves anyway like quiche, spaghetti bolognaise, cheesecake, rillettes, stewed peaches with honey, and walnut cake.

This afternoon Eric took a group in his yellow Kangoo to some place on the river to swim and Walt and Reed went with him; it's just now starting to rain so hopefully they got a chance to get in the water before the weather got wet. We're tired from all the work this week and also from the hard work we've been doing to learn French. But we've made progress - last night Eric was talking for several minutes at his normal speed to other French people about bicycles in various cities like Paris, Lille, and Amsterdam, and I understood almost everything he said. And I've learned the difference in pronunciation for "vu," "vous," and "veux"!!

Let the excitement begin...

This Friday is a performance of some kind by a touring theatre troup called Le Printemps sans Chapiteau. A chapiteau is a big tent and apparently they used to use a big tent but now they don't, therefore, they are sans chapiteau. They'll tour all summer and finish up at the Avignon festival in July. Well, yesterday the big truck with all the gear arrived, and for dinner we had 15 people at the table. Helene cooked a feast: caesar salad, white fish (hake) baked on a bed of leeks, and of course we had strawberries for dessert. This morning our work was helping unload the truck. Reed sat off to the side playing peek a boo inside two big plastic tree pots while the rest of us hauled staging, bleachers, lights, electrical cords, speakers, etc. etc. out of the truck and then assembled the bleachers. We stopped at 10 a.m. for coffee, or water with almond syrup, no food, no potato chips, no donuts, no croissants, (the French don't really snack, that's why they don't get fat) before getting back to it until about 12:30. That took us up to lunch, for which Helene had once again cooked a treat, for 22 of us. Salad of regular buttery lettuce with vinaigrette, frittata with potatoes, anchovy spread to go with the bread, squash in a spicy sauce, cheese platter, and for dessert, strawberry apple tart. Mmmm.

I just have to take each moment as it comes, because I have no idea what's going to happen next - will the performers arrive? Who is this guy with the long hair and pale skin who looks like a musician who just arrived? Will we be 30 at dinner? Will I be working in the garden, the kitchen, or helping the roadies? I never know until it's time, since my French isn't good enough to catch the logistics discussions. I don't worry about it though. Eric is very helpful with his English, and my consolation is that Stuart, a fellow Welshman who lives here at the hameau ("fellow" because I have Welsh blood too) understands even less.

I've been feeding Reed early and getting him to bed by 8 or 9 since we haven't been eating until then or even later. Last night he was homesick and sad about our decision to let Fiona stay with her current caretaker (who will give her a home where she can nap on the furniture), so I made him pancakes which he ate with strawberries and strawberry jam. But tonight I think we're all going out to some small performances in some villages and then having a picnic. That's all I know. After lunch Yuki and I helped Helene make a salad with beets, zucchini, carrot, parsley, fennel, and quinoa, and she is also making some kind of savory bread pudding that also has beets in it. She's working on a Russian theme - thus, the beets. Oh, because the theatre thing on Friday has something to do with Chekhov! I'm sure I'll understand more as the week progresses.

Not a weed

Views of Hameau de la Brousse



And more about what we eat...

The lettuce in the garden at La Brousse isn't quite big enough to harvest yet but no matter, the dandelions have been up for weeks and when their leaves are small and tender they are good to eat. A little bitter, yes, and also a diuretic, but high in vitamin C I think, kind of a spring tonic, to drink a lot of water and eat a salad of "pissenlit" (literally translated means pee in the bed). It amused me on Saturday morning in the garden to be given a basket and instructed to harvest dandelion leaves from the row of them growing in the garden. Of course they're everywhere else too and if we get hard up for the cultivated ones we can always just go around and harvest them from the strawberry beds.

Charlotte aux Fraises

Helene slices the charlotte
Eric (French), Ragi (Norwegian), Regis (French), and Amandine (Belgian)
Michel cleans up the charlotte
Saturday night, late dinner of delicious pizza - nothing like Pizza Hut, it was agreed, and all were happy to hear Reed had never been there - and the crowning glory, a strawberry charlotte constructed by Amandine from the strawberries that Eric, Amandine, and I had harvested Saturday morning in the blazing sunshine.

As Walt and Reed and I were hungrily waiting around, having helped make the charlotte, prepare the pizza toppings, gone for a walk, read for hours, with still no sign of dinner being served, I realized that the key difference between the US and France is that for the French, dinner IS the entire point of the evening, there is nothing more important, in general, that will come after it except conversation. Whereas in the US, usually dinner is something we do first in the evening, followed by other things: a movie, reading a book, playing cards, watching t.v.... so when the pizza was finally served at 10 pm it was with a palpable sense of drama and lots of bravos.

The dessert was cheered, and second helpings taken all around, until finally Michel provoked a lot of jokes by continuing to cut tiny slivers, just a bit more, over and over again.

Hameau de la Brousse

Hameau de la Brousse

We’ve moved on to our next WWOOF host after Chateau Lassalle, after we said goodbye yesterday morning to the Cutts family in Aignan. It’s never easy to go after sharing peoples’ lives for a couple of weeks, doing the dishes, dealing with cranky kids, enjoying good meals and staying up too late, worrying about the weather… but we consoled ourselves with the thought that we’ll be back in the Gers in a few years, hopefully.

Steve took us to the train for what was for us a very easy 3 hours of train travel from Mont de Marsan to Bordeaux to Angouleme. Helene picked us up and ran some errands with us in the car and then we came back to Hameau de la Brousse, which is out in the rolling countryside very near the border between the Charente and the Dordogne. Hameau means hamlet, and this hamlet, a group of houses and barns, is owned entirely by three artists who have slowly renovated the whole place into houses, a gite, artist studios, performance spaces, etc. There is a huge garden and a park area in which there is a sort of natural amphitheatre, a river, a pond, limestone cliffs, and old quarrying caves that go into the cliffs. We’re out in the middle of nowhere and don’t mind at all, it’s so interesting.

There is quite a community of people here, several other WWOOFers, all younger than us of course, one from Austria, one from Japan, one from Norway, one from Belgium, a couple of friends of the owners, some paying guests, a resident artist, all of whom add up to a lot of mouths to feed. But with so many WWOOFers we get a lot done and the dishes don’t take too long. Things are surprisingly clean and organized for a place that gets so much traffic in the kitchen – this must be due to Helene and Michel’s skill at making lists of things for their WWOOFers to do immediately after breakfast. They are easy going and friendly and also organized and efficient – which is great, because it means meals are on time and the bed sheets are clean.

We’re eating very well – all the food appears to be organic and so far it’s been vegetarian although I’m told that only one of the WWOOFers is vegetarian. Last night it was sautéed carrots, millet mixed with bulgur, dandelion salad with vinaigrette, and strawberries and cream for dessert. Lunch today was scalloped squash, dandelion salad, leftover bulgar/millet, cheese, and more strawberries. And dinner this evening, spicy red beans and squash, rice, dandelion salad, and even more strawberries with cream. And always lots of sourdough bread and butter. And no, I’m not tired of the strawberries yet – they are fabulously fresh and delicious, straight from the garden. Helene isn’t tired of the strawberries either, tonight I saw her brazenly licking her plate after she’d eaten her dessert. Everyone rushed off after dinner to the theatre event happening down in the hameau’s park, something about “And Zeus created his woman…” but Reed was tired enough that he took himself to bed to read so I stayed in the room with him to help him get showered and ready to sleep. He’s having to adjust to being the only child again after having Ella to play with for the last two weeks. But there are plenty of friendly cats, a couple of dogs, and some chickens that he can visit with, and an amazing amount of really varied and interesting outdoor space complete with sculptures, caves, woods, stone steps, and numerous paths to follow. You can visit the website by clicking on the title of this post above.